19 February 2009

Today Brown cocks-up in Rome over the simple matter of an invitation for the Pope to visit the UK, and fratricide continues apace inside the Cabinet, 16 months away from a possible leadership election.

Meanwhile back with real economy, that is fast spiralling out of control, we have this from the CBI’s Richard Lambert:

The government appears to have been fighting a series of forest fires rather than building a platform for economic recovery. There’s little sense of a coherent strategy about what’s happened to date.

It’s hard to remember – let alone distinguish between – the welter of initiatives that it has launched in the past couple of months. The big ones that could really make a difference....have got lost in a thicket of much less ambitious announcements.

All Brown is interested in is tactics, his own personal survival and wrong footing Cameron.

Then Ken Clarke hits out at the latest finance figures:

I'm sure Gordon Brown told him, 'no, no, no more restraint in public spending on top of what we've already done this side of an election'. Gordon wants to buy a few votes.

But the voters are going to have to pay the interest on all this mounting debt. This is a time for public sector restraint.

Then bang:

I have been driven completely crazy by reports of the prime minister going round the world saying we wouldn't have a problem if only every other finance minister had behaved as he behaved when he was chancellor. The man is living in a world of fantasy

These arguments are starting to resonant.

I doubt the deluded Brown knows how much his credibility is suffering. Have we reached the point where it is damaged beyond repair?